


It Came from Planet Birthday

by indevan



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Birthday, Birthday Cake, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24594151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Sylvain's birthday has always been bittersweet, so Felix decides to do something for him
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 65





	It Came from Planet Birthday

**Author's Note:**

> happy belated birthday, sylvain

Felix considered himself a fairly light sleeper. The slightest sounds didn’t rouse him, but it usually didn’t take much to get him to stir from slumber. It only took rolling over and not meeting resistance for him to open his eyes. Sure enough, the other side of the bed was empty. He let out a low, rumbling sigh and turned over to where his phone was charging on his bedside table. He squinted his eyes to brace himself for the brightness when he woke it up. Despite this measure, the screen still seared his eyes and he had to squeeze them shut for a few seconds before carefully opening them again.

It was half past three in the morning.

Felix felt a growl bubble up in his throat and he put his phone back down. He pushed the comforter off of him and swung his legs over the side of the mattress. In the dark, he inched his feet forward until his toes hit the back of his slides and he could just shove them on. He walked out of their bedroom, picking his Dragon Ball boxers out from his ass from where they had gotten wedged in sleep.

The living room was dark save for the illumination of Sylvain’s laptop screen on his face. He sat on the couch, hunched over the keyboard.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

Sylvain jerked his head up. He was just out of the glow of the laptop, but it was enough for Felix to make out how much of a mess that he looked.

“Did I wake you?”

That much was obvious, but Felix didn’t know how to say that it was his absence that woke him up, not whatever it was he was doing out here.

“Yes,” he said instead.

“Sorry. I just got distracted. I’m on the Carvel website.”

Felix hadn’t expected that.

“Carvel?”

He hadn’t even  _ heard _ that name in eons. When he was little, his father always got him that dumb whale cake for his and Glenn’s birthdays. Glenn loved it, but Felix who hated both cake  _ and _ ice cream grew to detest Fudgie and his dumb, empty smile.

“Yeah, I fell down a hole, thinking of shit from our childhood. Remember Showbiz Pizza Place?”

Felix did, even though he preferred not to.

“So I was going around until I remembered Carvel. There’s still one down near my dad’s house, I think.”

“Are you looking for a birthday cake?” Felix asked bluntly.

Sylvain blinked at him. “What?”

“Tomorrow...today,” he amended. “It’s your birthday.”

“Oh, shit. It is, isn’t it?” Sylvain tipped his head back in a laugh.

Felix had known Sylvain almost his whole life. They first met at Sylvain’s birthday party. They Gautiers had moved in and simply invited everyone on the street to celebrate since they knew no one else. Felix had been four and Sylvain had been turning six. Now they had twenty years friendship and three years of dating in addition to that. He thought he knew him fairly well. Sylvain always acted strangely around his birthday, torn between wanting to celebrate it and wanting to ignore it. His brother was a real piece of work (putting it in the lightest way possible), and was doubly miserable and cruel on Sylvain’s birthday. Miklan was gone, long gone, but Sylvain still got activated around early June.

“You can order from the website, Fee,” he said, speaking quickly. “Even the seasonal stuff is on here. Cookie O’Puss, and this Santa that’s totally not the Fudgie the Whale mold repurposed.”

This was how his birthday issues were manifesting, it seemed. Felix sighed.

“Sylvain, come to bed.”

To his surprise, he closed his laptop and got up from the couch. He walked by him to go to the bedroom, his hand brushing at Felix’s waist as he did. Felix turned to follow him, but let his eyes linger on Sylvain’s abandoned laptop.

_ Hm… _

\--

Part of him couldn’t believe that he was doing this. Felix listened to the robotic voice of his map app as he turned down a side street towards his destination. He always heard people would do wild things for the people they loved. In the grand scheme of it all, this wasn’t particularly wild, but it still was a little strange.

For his birthday back in February, Sylvain took Felix to his favorite KBBQ place and let him eat his weight in spicy meat and didn’t even try to cajole him into eating any vegetables like he normally did. This was Felix’s way of doing something for him. That morning, Sylvain had still been asleep when he woke up. Felix had kissed him, wrote a note to say he was going out, and left.

He was, though, out of his depth. Felix didn’t like desserts on the whole. He didn’t mind some that leaned more towards savory or were simply less sweet, but he was not a dessert person. If he was forced, he would eat a key lime pie or something with tartness that at least mimicked flavors he enjoyed. Pure sugar and sweetness was alien to him. Still, this was for Sylvain. Felix undid his seatbelt, grabbed his phone and wallet, and got out of the car.

It was not at all a surprise to him that the place was empty, save for the personnel. It was summer and early, plus there were other ice cream places around that were presumably better? Felix wasn’t sure. He knew Annette and Ashe were always going to Twistee Treat, but he thought that might be because the entire building was shaped like a giant ice cream cone and they thought that was neat.

It worked in his favor that it was empty, though, because it meant that he didn’t have to wait. Felix had been working on the anger issues that plagued him as a teenager for years, but he still knew that he was remarkably impatient. Everything in the shop was bright, too. The colors, the lighting, it was starting to mess with his head a little. He stopped at the freezer case that had to contain cakes since there was a giant sign above it that proclaimed _ CAKES _ in all caps. He avoided Fudgie, the enemy from his childhood, and grabbed another variety. He carried it in both hands up to the counter and plunked it down.

The girl at the register smiled at him. “One Cookie Puss?”

Felix exhaled a sigh and nodded. “Yeah.”

He paid for the dumb cake and drove it home. Through the cellophane screen, he could see Cookie Puss’s face: blank cookie eyes, ice cream nose, frosted smile. It grinned up at him almost mockingly.

“Fuck you,” he told it. “I’m a good boyfriend. I don’t even like ice cream.”

Once he was back at the apartment, Felix stowed Mr. Puss carefully in the freezer. He could hear the exhaust fan was on in their bathroom but heard no water, which meant that Sylvain was up and either had just finished showering, or was about to shower. Sure enough, the door opened and Sylvain walked out, completely nude and towel drying his hair.

At the sight of Felix, he lowered it and grinned.

“Hey, you’re back. Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere.” He paused. Frowned. “I have a surprise for you.”

Sylvain’s eyebrows rose, but the grin he put on to accompany the action wasn’t as genuine as his usual one.

“Oh? Is it the type of surprise I have to put clothes on for?”

Felix fought the urge to roll his eyes. He loved Sylvain, but he was sometimes too much.

“Yes.”

“Got it. Be right out.”

He gave a wink and disappeared into their bedroom. Felix frowned at the closed door. He knew that Sylvain was trying to act like his normal self. He couldn’t decide if it was to fool Felix or himself, but he reckoned that it was probably a little of both.

Sylvain emerged a few minutes later in his typical attire: a Sisters of Mercy shirt with a dark flannel over it. It was early enough in the month that there was still June gloom, but Felix still thought he was overdressed. He made his way over to him and locked both arms around Felix’s waist to pull him close. Felix leaned into the touch. This was why he hauled ass out to their old neighborhood to get that monstrosity that currently resided in their freezer. He loved Sylvain and he wanted to make this birthday good for him in whatever way he could. And if he wanted an ice cream cake spurred on by his irrational, three am internet searches, then Felix was going to give it to him.

“It’s--”

Felix was cut off by a flurry of knocking. He scowled and whipped his head to look over his shoulder. Sylvain pulled out from their embrace and went to unlock the door. On the other side, the rest of their friends were assembled. Annette was at the lead, and obviously the one who knocked. It wasn’t lost on Felix that they always had her at the head of the group when they risked igniting his wrath. Annette was his favorite person after Sylvain. Sometimes even more than Sylvain, but only sometimes.

“Happy birthday!” she chirped. “We came to take you out to linner.”

“Late lunch, early dinner,” Ashe clarified.

Felix glowered. Of course. Sylvain grinned and this time it looked genuine.

“Sounds great.”

That was that, then. His surprise would have to wait a while.

\--

The ride to the restaurant was miserable. They opted to only take two cars. Ashe drove and offered Sylvain the front, because it was his birthday. Felix was stuck sitting on the hump of the middle seat, crammed between Dimitri and Dedue. He watched out the windshield as Ashe tried to follow Annette’s speedy, erratic driving to their destination.

Dinner--or linner, whatever--was fine. The food was good and Sylvain was holding his hand under the table. Every now and then, he would run his thumb over his knuckles.

“One year closer to thirty,” Ingrid said. She gave a wry smile.

Sylvain faked a groan. “Don’t remind me.”

Mercedes fluttered her hands around her face as she spoke in her typical lilting voice.

“Thirty isn’t bad,” she said. “I’m doing fine.”

She dropped her hands and reached to pick her burger back up. Mercedes offered a bite to Dedue, who shook his head.

“If you don’t mind handing over a fry, though,” he said. “I’m afraid these sweet potato tots weren’t as good as I hoped them to be.”

“Of course, darling!”

Mercedes happily handed a fry over to her husband and Felix thought of how he once bit Sylvain’s fingers when he tried to take part of his mountain melt once.

“What should we get for dessert?” Ashe asked.

Felix snapped his head away from Mercedes and Dedue and fixed him with a look.

“Nothing,” he said.

Ashe frowned, his brow creasing in confusion.

“What? But it’s Sylvain’s birthday.”

“No dessert.”

“Fe-lix,” Annette said, shaking her head. “I know you don’t like sweets, but it’s for Sylvain. Y’know, your  _ boyfriend?” _

He was aware that said boyfriend was looking at him in confusion at his adamant refusal of dessert. If Sylvain had dessert here, even a complimentary sundae accompanied by obnoxious singing from the waitstaff, he wouldn’t want what Felix gave him. Dimitri and Ingrid, two he had known just as long as Sylvain, were also looking at him.

Felix knew this lot. They wouldn’t let up until he admitted his surprise. Annette and Mercedes together were an unholy force of badgering and Ashe would play up his “I’m so nice and earnest and sweet” angle to get people to crumble beneath him. Ingrid and Dimitri had twenty-three years of ammo. Dedue wouldn’t necessarily care, but he wasn’t Felix’s biggest fan, and would join his wife in her pestering on that principle.

He sighed.

“I already got him a cake. It’s at home.”

He half-muttered the words, hoping not everyone would catch them. That was, of course, in vain, because Annette’s eyes went wide and she let out a little squeal.

“Awh, that’s so sweet! Felix!”

Felix couldn’t believe he was stuck with any of them. He grumbled under his breath and looked down at his empty plate. Under the table, he felt Sylvain grab his hand again. He lifted his face towards his to see him smiling.

“Who knew you were a romantic, Fee?”

“No one. Shut up.”

Despite his words, Felix squeezed Sylvain’s hand gently where it rested on his lap.

\--

“So, where’s my cake?”

Sylvain bucked him a little with his hip when they got back to the apartment. Felix was still pissed that his surprise was ruined. At least he hadn’t been forced to go into detail about his cake. Annette, though, demanded pictures as proof that he was being sweet and thoughtful. Felix hated them all.

“Let me get it.”

He stared towards their kitchen, but Sylvain stopped him with a gentle touch to his wrist. Felix turned around to look at the black and white faces of the Sisters of Mercy rather than up at Sylvain’s face. He never did well with eye contact, anyway.

“You wanted it to be a surprise, didn’t you?”

He grunted. “Yeah.”

A real smile spread onto Sylvain’s face and he pulled him in for a kiss. Felix balled his hands into the fabric of his flannel and kissed him back. He broke away and went to the freezer to get the cake. Sylvain followed him, standing where the carpet became linoleum. He smiled when he saw the box.

“Fee, you didn’t…”

“I did.” He thrust it out.

“Cookie Puss?”

Felix nodded.

He carried the box to their kitchen table while Sylvain got utensils and napkins.

“Why did you bother with two forks?”

“Wishful thinking.”

Sylvain gave a wink before sitting down. He lifted the lid of the box and dug his fork in. He didn’t bother with a plate, since he would likely be the only one eating it. Felix watched him bring his fork to his lips. Watched his eyes widen a bit as he tasted the creamy ice cream. It was quiet enough that he could hear Sylvain’s teeth crunched the generically named “crunchies.”

“Is it good?” He asked.

“Amazing. Want some?”

Felix gave him a look. Sylvain responded by removing Cookie Puss’s ice cream cone nose and tapping the pointed, wafer end on the tip of Felix’s nose.

“Thanks, Felix. I know I’ve been in kind of a weird mood and. This means a lot.”

He shrugged. “It’s whatever.”

Sylvain dug his fork in and grinned, clearly seeing through his faked nonchalance.

“Did you know that Cookie Puss is an alien from Planet Birthday?”

Felix pulled a face.

“There’s Cookie Puss  _ lore? _ Ugh.”

At that, Sylvain laughed and, after a moment, Felix couldn’t help but join in.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] It Came From Planet Birthday](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27425149) by [donniedont](https://archiveofourown.org/users/donniedont/pseuds/donniedont)




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